Not Meant for Me
by Koala
Summary: Blank is living on his own after the game, but apparently, hermit's have "Please Disturb" signs on thier doors. =YAOI=
1. Default Chapter

He ran.  
  
His legs pumped, smoothly, his eyes blocked almost completely by the thick band of leather over them. It wasn't a problem, however - he was never going to need to see again anyway. He knew that no matter how fast he ran, he wasn't going to make it, and he slowed down fractionally, feeling a tight constriction around his waist as a large vine picked him up. Before he could lose consciousness, he threw the piece of vellum in his hand, watching it bounce on the ground before his lover, nimbler and smaller than him, caught it, turning back.  
  
Endlessly turquoise eyes caught his for a moment before he yelled, hoping that the boy would hear him and listen.  
  
He felt a terrible cold cover him, and suddenly there was nothing.  
  
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His eyes opened, and the first thing he saw was his leather band, which slipped indignantly over his eyes.  
  
The second thing he saw was Marcus, his eyes stooped, his whole body stooped. Blank fell, his feet securely hitting the ground. He opened and closed his hands, then stretched, thinking, Then this is what it's like to come back from the dead.  
  
He looked around, expecting to see Zidane, his tail wagging in the air happily and his playful smile taking up most of his face. He expected at least one lonely little kiss, one hug, one smile.  
  
There was no one else.  
  
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He had seen Dagger, that dame that had stolen his lover return, he had seen her clearly broken heart - as broken as his had been when he found out that Zidane had left him, left him for real this time, not just for some bar wench who would distract him for a few days before he came crawling back, his tail literally between his legs.  
  
He watched as she became queen; he had been invited to the coronation but he did not want to go. He just wanted to stay at home, without anyone, until he died. He had found out what had happened to Zidane, and his heart froze.  
  
Finally, a few months later, he moved out to a house near the sea. He moved away - since the mist had receded, people had been moving out toward the sea, and he, just like anyone with any sense of adventure and a need to leave civilization behind would do.  
  
It happened after he had been living alone for almost two months, right when the tomatoes in his garden were turning ripe. He was alone in the back, wearing comfortable cotton breeches and no shirt, the thick belt over his eyes to protect them from the sun. He had never thought that he would settle down so neatly - he had always pictured himself with Tantulus forever, stealing and acting, all in the same breath.  
  
He had taken up gardening as a necessity - he would go hunting occasionally, bringing in the rare chocobo or the equally delicious bi- horn, living off the land. It annoyed him to no extent, but he didn't want to go back to the city and have to see Dagger rule, crying because she had lost Zidane.  
  
Well guess what, broad, I lost him too.  
  
It was then that he heard a knock at the door, a banging and a cry of, "Help, please! C'mon, I know that someone is in there!"  
  
Blank stood up and pursed his lips in annoyance. He had moved out here to be a hermit, and as far as he knew, hermits did not want to be bothered. But he moved to the door anyway, the tenor voice sounding familiar.  
  
He opened the door and found himself staring into a pair of endlessly turquoise eyes, a pair of eyes that he had known very well. He lifted his belt and saw Zidane's small, adorable face in agony, his eyes pleading, a smudge of brown over his nose and down to his mouth.  
  
"Blank?" He asked, and it was then that Blank realized that Zidane was not alone. Under his arm was a man - a man with muddied silver hair, with dirty, ripped clothes, a man that looked like he was on his last leg. Zidane looked back up. "Can we come in? Please?"  
  
Blank nodded dumbly, opening the door all the way and letting the two weary men into his house. Zidane helped the man to the couch, were he lay him on the shabby brown blanket that Blank had acquired for free from two tavern girls in Treno, saying to the man, "You'll be okay, he's my friend, I promise."  
  
Zidane looked up at Blank, who didn't say a word. His eyes begged, and finally he pleaded, "Do you have some water? Something to eat, please? I'm sorry for barging in on you like this.but."  
  
Blank shook his head and instead walked outside to his little well, drawing a bucket of clean water and then to his garden where he picked the two ripest tomatoes. He walked back inside, handed the items to Zidane and watched him consume them with vigor.  
  
"So.where did you go?" Blank finally asked when he realized that Zidane was done with his half-fast meal. He sat down and stared at the other man, who was asleep, his hands curled around his chest.  
  
"We were in the Lost Continent for so long.we went to his palace - lived there for a little while because he needed to heal. But I started to get antsy.you know I don't like to be fixed in one place at once - and I wanted to leave. But I didn't want to go without him and leave him alone. See, he needed me to help him, to heal him. So finally we left, came here." Zidane took a swig of water then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand quickly, then continued, "But we got attacked by a Malboro. He cast all these spells, but he wasn't the same after the whole mess at the Iifa Tree and the Malboro poisoned him."  
  
Blank didn't ask any questions, even though he wanted to. He wanted to know what had happened at the Iifa Tree, who this strange, pale man was, why he needed to heal and why Zidane was the one who had to do that job.  
  
After a few moments of silence, Blank asked softly, "Who is he?"  
  
Zidane didn't answer right away, and finally a strained voice murmured, "He's.my brother."  
  
Blank paused, his thinking halted. "Your.brother?" He laughed, out loud, once, then shook his head. "You don't have a brother, Zidane, remember?"  
  
Zidane looked furious, his eyebrows crashing together violently as he quickly spat out the words, "Look, he's my brother, okay? And now he's hurt bad - it shouldn't matter if he was a justice, I'd still want to help him!"  
  
Blank bit his tongue gently; he had forgotten how Zidane could get volatile when defending what he thought was right. He made gentle shushing motions with his hands and sighed, his voice demure, "Okay, okay. Look, I never said I wouldn't help him out. I'm just saying that I thought you were an orphan." He gave the man an easy glance-over and nodded. "I'll help him get better, if you want. You're going to head to Treno, right? To see your dame?"  
  
Zidane nodded, then asked, "Do you know how Dagger - I mean, Garnet, is? Have you heard from her?"  
  
Blank shook his head, biting his tongue again, this time to prevent something bitter from coming out.  
  
Zidane looked down, bit his tongue nervously and mumbled, "Can I leave him here with you? I need to get to Treno.I want to get there soon."  
  
Blank sighed, shrugged and nodded finally, unable to refuse Zidane's turquoise eyes as they begged, saying that he was desperate to see her again. He slid his belt over his eyes, so that Zidane wouldn't see the sadness there. 


	2. And the squash goes squish

Zidane left not long afterwards, northbound for Alexandria. He planned to surprise his dame, and he was eager to leave. The man with him, the man who he claimed was his brother though, was in no shape to go anywhere. Blank was a good deal shorter than the silver-haired stranger and didn't have any spare clothing, so he bit his tongue at Zidane's quick departure and focused on making the stranger a decent set of clothes from spare sheets. Blank's talent with a needle was at the very least humble, but he managed to cobble together something that looked vaguely like a shirt and pants. He, for the umpteenth time since his departure, cursed his lack of survival skills.

The man didn't wake until almost a week after Zidane left. He was sleeping on Blank's bed because he had a recurring fever and Blank thought that the floor would be too drafty for the sick man. He woke slowly, and during the week he seemed to suffer from various different types of dreams, including impossibly terrible nightmares.

Blank was in the garden wrestling with a squash vine when the silver-haired man came out of the house wearing a sheet wrapped around his shoulders, his arms holding them in place. He looked vaguely lost, confused as he looked around.

Blank stood and the squash vine fell to the muddy ground. "You okay? You hungry, or something?"

The man suddenly turned to look directly at Blank, his blue eyes foggy. He ignored the questions and instead asked, "Where's Zidane?"

Blank sighed and spoke softly, his voice gentle, "He left. A week ago, for Alexandria. He left you here with me."

"Ah." The answer was simple, quiet, but the syllable held an unbearable amount of pain. The man looked around and they were quiet for a while, before the man softly uttered, "I'm Kuja."

"Yeah? I'm Blank. So…you're Zidane's brother?" Blank kneeled next to the squash and paled when he noticed he had broken one of the thick-skinned yellow fruits. 

He swore mildly to himself and almost missed Kuja say, "He's a liar, isn't he? His promises are pretty until something more interesting comes along."

Blank went silent and turned to see the pale-haired man looking out at the distance. He pretended to be unconcerned as he twined the vine along the support frame made of branches. "He's not a liar, not really." Blank protested softly, supporting his argument, "He's just a guy with priorities. We're not his priorities, I guess."

"Did he make you pretty promises? Did he say that he wouldn't abandon you?" Kuja's voice was harsh, but still soft and lilting. "He promised me that he wouldn't leave me."

"Yeah. Me too." Blank admitted and got up. "You sure you're not hungry? I could make something," he looked down at his meager garden, with tomatoes, squash and cucumber in season, "like, maybe a small salad?"

Kuja turned and shook his head, and headed back into the house. "Not even my own brother wanted me."

Blank watched him go into the house and turned back to his garden, his belt thick over his eyes as he went back to tying up the squash vines.

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            Time went by slowly, dragged in the thick, sunny, mist-free days of the coast. Kuja was quiet all the time, and fairly useless when it came to chores; more useless than Blank himself. The things that he did do well were outnumbered by the things that he did badly – he was a resourceful sort of man intellectually, but vaguely unaware of the world around him. While Blank was convinced that nine times out of ten he did not mean to let the food burn, the man was decidedly scatterbrained when it came to any sort of menial labor. He got frustrated easily because his body was not as strong as Blank's, without any sort of the same endurance levels. Blank felt this was a ridiculous notion. Kuja's talents obviously lay in magic, intellect and strategy, not in cooking and in the raising of gardens, and certainly not in sewing.

            Blank found him otherwise good company most of the time. He would fall into sullen, quiet moods, or into highly egotistical airs, but mainly he had a dry, cynical outlook on life. And while Blank found him beautiful in an alien, almost surreal way that was not an aspect of life that he wanted to share with the cold man. He was content with the man's friendship, but found himself not desiring Zidane's older brother. For him, only Zidane would do.

            Three months after Zidane had left, when the two were preparing for winter by smoking and preserving as much food as they could, a message arrived by a chocobo carrier presenting the invitation: 

_ You are most cordially invited_

_To attend the gracious wedding of Her Royal Majesty_

_Garnet til Alexandros 17th _

_To_

_Sir Zidane Tribal _

_On the day of the Harvest Moon_

_At the Royal Palace of Alexandria_

            Blank and Kuja had spent the evening talking about if they should go or not, but had not been able to agree on any particular reason not to. 

            They spent the night in silent melancholy.


End file.
